The theme of Change and Cross-cultural Relations provided the theoretical framework for the XX AISLLI Conference hosted by the Center for Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Is the Italian identity singular or plural both in and outside of Italy? How has it been transformed at different times and within different spaces and how has it altered other cultures? How was it able to reinvent itself as a myth in the culture of emigrants? How is it affecting social change in the age of globalization?

The conference explored language, politics, the media, the arts, the economy, and material culture in order to examine Italian identity/ies as a world-wide phenomenon. In particular, the conference will focus on what we should call “the Italies outside of Italy”: the large or “little Italies” which embodied and embody a regional identity more than a national one. These Italies are now part of a “glocal (global+local) world” in which cultural and ethnic identities are less linked to their territory than they were in the past. The notion of this new “glocal” reality will open political questions, regarding the limits of the idea of nation and the national conception of democracy.